May 26, 1952, Page 1

SOVIET MAY DOUBLE ITS OUTPUT BY 1970; 

But Parley of Experts at Arden House Believes Development Will Not Bring Utopia

By Harry Schwartz special To the New York Times.
May 26, 1952, Page 1

HARRIMAN, N. Y., May 25- By 1970 the Soviet Union may reach at least twice its present levels of production and military- economic strength, papers pre- sented this week-end at the Con- ference on Soviet Economic Growth at Arden House here indicated. But not even the most optimistic views on possible future Soviet economic development presented by the leading scholars who par- ticipated in the conference sug- gested that by 1970 the Soviet Union could reach such an abun- dance of material output as to per- mit inauguration of the Utopian state of pure communism in which each Soviet citizen would receive all he needed regardless of what work or how much work he did. Nor did the participants foresee any very rapid rise in Soviet living standards. The conference brought together about thirty-five students of the Soviet economy from leading uni- versities, research organizations and Government agencies, with Prof. Abram Bergson of Columbia University as chairman. The con- [ference was sponsored by the Joint Committee on Slavic Studies of the Social Science Research Coun- cil and the American Council of Learned Societies. Many of the carefully qualified

Doubling of Soviet Output by 1970 Seen

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and cautiously phrased papers; and discussions presented at: Arden House stressed the great difficulties that lay ahead of future Soviet economic develop- ment. These difficulties, many of the participants suggested, imply that future Soviet economic devel- opment will proceed at a slower pace than in the best periods of the past. All of the possible pro- jections presented to the group were based on the assumption that the Soviet Union would not be involved in a major conflict between now and 1970.
The most important of the prob- lems that may retard Soviet eco- nomic development may well be the difficulty of increasing the food supply adequately to keep pace with the rapidly growing popula- tion of that country. By 1970, Dr. Joseph Kershaw of the Rand Corporation explained, the Soviet Union may have to feed a pop- ulation of about 270,000,000, roughly one-third greater than at present. This will be no easy task. in the face of the great limitations facing Soviet agriculture. ☐ Gregory Grossman of Harvard University's Russian Research Center declared that even if a much higher rate of Soviet eco- nomic development was assumed than Soviet Premier Stalin implied in a 1946 speech stating the goals for such progress, Soviet produc- tion in 1970 would still be only equal to United States output in 1950. Mr. Grossman added that even if this were accomplished Soviet income a person would be well below that of the United States in 1950 because of the much greater number of Soviet citizens. The United States population to- day is about 156,000,000. He stressed that important retarding factors facing Soviet economic development made most dubious the attainment of any such higher rate as assumed in his discussion.

Capital Investment

Dr. Norman Kaplan of the Rand Corporation suggested that the So- viet regime probably would con- tinue the policy of plowing back into capital investment 15 to 20 per cent of the gross national out- put annually. Almost half of this investment may well continue to be devoted to expanding industrial production. In this connection he pointed out that the Soviet Union had historically invested much more heavily, relatively, in indus- try, particularly in metallurgical and metal-fabricating industries, than did the United States at com- parable stages of development, a factor to which he attributed much of the credit for making possible the speedier growth of industrial prdouction in the Soviet Union than in this country. By 1970 the Soviet Union prob-| ably will have a substantially larg-| er labor force available for pro- duction than at present, Dr. War- ren Eason of Johns Hopkins Uni- versity reported. He estimated that by that date there might be about 150,000,000 Soviet citizens in the age brackets of 16 to 59, compared with about 120,000,000 in those ages in 1950.
Soviet natural resources avail- able for future development_are very large, Prof. Chauncey D. Har- ris of the University of Chicagol reported. Soviet estimated energy, resources exceed those for all other countries of Asia and Europe com- bined. By Soviet estimates iron ore resources in the Soviet Union in- clude more than half the world's total, he said. But these resources are often unfavorably distributed for easy exploitation and there is much poor quality iron ore in the stated reserves, Professor Harris added.

Output Below U. S. Worker's

A study of Soviet industrial labor productivity by Prof. Walter. Galenson of the University of California concluded that the out- put of the average Soviet worker is perhaps only about 40 per cent of the average United States worker's productivity. As a result, he suggested, there is so much more room for improvement in Soviet labor productivity that a continued high rate of capital in- vestment may permit a faster in- crease in the Soviet Union than in this country, raising Soviet pro- ductivity to perhaps 50 or 60 per cent of the United States 1970 level by that year.
Soviet economic relations with the Eastern European satellite states result in a net balance favoring the former, Prof. Oleg Hoeffding of Columbia University said. This may help to increase Soviet investment since the Soviet Union "shows a distinct prefer- ence for collecting these exactions in capital equipment rather than consumers' goods."
The retarding factors and diffi- culties that must be overcome by Soviet economic planners were enumerated at the conference. Prof. Vladimir P. Timoshenko! of Stanford University and Prof. George B. Cressey of Syracuse University stressed that soil and climatic conditions limit very sharply any future expansion of acreage devoted to raising crops for the growing population. Profes-¡ sor Timoshenko cited the estimate of a leading Soviet authority that: as of 1933 only about one-eighth of all Soviet territory was being put to agricultural use. Soviet leaders are no longer promising new free lands for settlement in Siberia or elsewhere, but instead are engag- ing in very expensive afforestation and irrigation projects, indicating revision of earlier optimistic forecasts. a

Military Needs Compete

Recent slowing down of Soviet industrial progress is probably due [in part "to a cut in the rate of increase of the volume of invest- ment, necessitated by the compet- ing claims of military needs," Mr. Grossman asserted. He pointed out, too, that the rate of growth of the non-agricultural labor force probably would diminish in the fu- ture, while the Soviet government was likely to have to expand sub- stantially investment in housing, public utilities, and transport. These areas of the economy had been relatively neglected in the past while industrial production growth was being stressed at all costs.
Prof. M. Gardner Clark of Cor- nel University and Dr. Nicholas Rodin of Johns Hopkins University pointed to increasingly serious de- pletion of key Soviet coal and iron ore resources. The Donets Basin, the major Soviet coal source, is facing the need to begin working relatively thin coal seams as thicker seams are exhausted while both there and in the Kuznetsk Basin coal mines are being dug deeper. At Magnitogorsk much of the best quality upper zone iron ore is exhausted and there is ever greater need to mine poorer qual- ity ores with troublesome sulphur content and lower iron content.
There is significant peasant dis- content in the Soviet Union which "is not likely to disappear during the next ten or twenty years, de- spite a moderate improvement in the standard of living," Dr. Lazar Volin of the Department of Agri-1 culture reported. Though the col- |lective farm system "has not lived up to the original expectations of a greatly increased output,” it has enabled the Soviet state "to ex- tract large quantities of needed farm products at a low cost” and is unlikely to be abandoned in this period of war danger, he added. Two Tass reporters came from] New York to Arden House today. They sought as much written ma- terial as they could obtain from the chairman regarding the con- ference's deliberation. They did not receive copies of all press re- leases, because the supply was in- adequate for all reporters. They did not avail themselves of the opportunity to interview the par- ticipants.